Timing is everything

I am watching, loosely, the market today and seeing a surge above a resistance line in the S&P500...and most market indices I expect...that has me wishing that I was in the trades that I have orders for. Today alone would have seen, so far, about $6 per share.

My shorts were not well timed and I am rethinking my shorting strategy to take more of an overall look at market dynamics, or sector dynamics. I have an idea for using some sort of sector rotation to bias my trading direction and to determine which stocks to be trading at any given point. Still in the mulling over stage.

Taking a step back, all of the orders that I have are contingent upon a bit of a reversal or pullback in order to get executed based on my criteria. While I know this is bound to happen I am biding my time by looking back at the triggers that I started with this week and going back to the point in time when those triggers were initially more relevant. When I placed the orders the triggers had already been hit and I was hoping for a little last minute pullback into my trading range.

Now that the triggers have mostly run out, the next reversal that can trigger my initial trade entries will be on a new column of "O"s which advances up the trendline. This point on the chart for the last trades that I missed would have worked out as follows...based on my scaling into the trade method assuming that I had started as recently as July 1st and I used all my picks including BMI and SFG:

Current stop out value = $1185 (close to real value)
Closed trades P/L = $30 (one winner, one stopped out full and one small winner)
Paper value about = $1885
Due to my stops being at least $1 below the active price the actual paper value of my portfolio would be higher. Given the market sentiment I might be inclined to cash out for that extra and wait for the next triggers...at least on the stocks that are very near target values and may turn soon.

This gives me more motivation to hold out for my entries. It is worth noting that 3 were 30 shares, 7 were 60 shares, and 1 was 90 shares, The one that stopped out was the 90 share trade which is also the one that I see I would not have entered due to the chart pattern and due to the lack of shorting inventory, now I know. The numbers for the trades are about what I would expect.

Off to lunch now.

Jeff.

June 2nd...non-trading trading

Today I could not actively trade but I was able to follow along to see what would have been nice entries.

There were a total of 9 trades that I may have taken. A few more setup according to the TICK entries but were not good due to the price location, market situation and gut feeling...yes, the gut still plays a part, a smaller part than it used to though.

As I start to type this entry I see a final setup in the last 20 minutes of trading that I would like to trade, but prudence tells me to stay clear. The EOD volume is not as high as normal so I SHOULD be able to get in well and get out safely...but it is the end of the day afterall.

Actually, the day has been low volume overall. seeing as this is a consolidation after yesterday's runup I think that this bodes well for the bears. Personally I don't really care which way it goes as I would just like to be able to profit from the moves, trending or slow range bound are looking like the best for me right now to practise in.

Here is the TICK chart: setups are green arrows and trade triggers are black.

I checked the price entries based on the TICK spikes at the triggers and fudged about 2 cents or so against me and used tight stops due to the nature of the range trading today. The results are as follows:

SDS, 6 trades. 1 loser. $1.19 per share gained overall or 2.25% based on average price.

SSO, 3 trades. 0 losers. $0.42 per share gained overall or 1.56% based on average price.

So, single lots of both gross return of $162

Optimum position sizing of 200 SDS and 400 SSO would yeild $410

Fudging 30% against me puts the single lot return at $113 and optimum at $287.

Oh, commissions would be $90 and all these figures are in US dollars so I see a bit more at this time

I'll feel better when these are actual real trading results.

Jeff.

February 17th...the fake returns for a day...

Today, the day after the North American holiday, President's Day, and Family Day up here would not have been agood day for me to typically be in the market, so I hung back.

The Global Gold index (GD) started high as the price of gold jumped yesterday...and it only stands to reason that gold related stocks, and therefore indices, would rise accordingly. As it was GD started near the top of my pivot points, which puts me out of my "zone". So I decided to do some technical fake trading to see what I could stirup, and to keep me on my toes.

I'll post the GD chart here with a different annotation than normal. The red boxes are the HGD trades start and stop times and prices and the green are for HGU. The circles are my break even or losers, and they will bee noted as well.

Given the start of the day I figured that it was going to be a flatish morning with a decent gap fade in the afternoon as soon as the 200sma caught up again. I didn't get the gap fade but did see a return to below the opening price, so a little fade. Perhaps the rest will happen tomorrow. I would just buy a full load of HGD at the top but I don't trust picking a top outside of the pivot point ranges. I ended up having a go at a couple of points and alternated buying HGU and HGD figuring that I might get lucky and catch a top...no such luck. The nice double hump could have given me a technical entry between 1250h and 1315h but I was not watching at that time...I probably would not have taken it anyway as my morning trading did not produce any great numbers to use as a buffer.

Once the price crossed the 200sma (green line) I jumped in (yah, I should have jumped in for real here as this is a close to a sure thing as I can think of in trading) right where the price popped back up for a quick test. The only reason I would let this trade go so long is that I am gaining confidence in my afternoon calls and the HGD profit went negative on me. I thought about it at the solid red R3, and again at R2+1/2 but bailed before that line was crossed. I got back in as the line was recrossed for a last trade to top things off for the day.

A note about technical trading...even though pivot points are such they are not determined on the fly so I consider them a bit different. The red and blue lines are the 30sma and 50 sma respectively. Often they indicate a trending period and they did just that in textbook style today. Right up to 1230h the price stayed mostly above the 30sma which stayed above the 50sma. in the afternoon the reverse occurred for some nice downtrending action.

Here are the trades, all the HGD trades are in the $7 range and the HGU are in the $15 range.

1023h Buy $7.43 Sell $7.48 Gain 5 cents ps Return 0.7%
1028h Buy $7.43 Sell $7.43 Gain 0 cents ps Return 0%
1055h Buy $7.30 Sell $7.34 Gain 4 cents ps Return 0.5%
1124h Buy $7.31 Sell $7.29 Gain -2 cents ps Return -0.3%
1127h Buy $15.73 Sell $15.83 Gain 10 cents ps Return 0.6%
1138h Buy $7.24 Sell $7.27 Gain 3 cents ps Return 0.4%
1156h Buy $7.19 Sell $7.22 Gain 3 cents ps Return 0.4%
1202h Buy $15.86 Sell $15.98 Gain 12 cents ps Return 0.8%
1334h Buy $7.24 Sell $7.42 Gain 18 cents ps Return 2.4%
1501h Buy $7.42 Sell $7.50 Gain 8 cents ps Return 1%

For any prices under $7.30 I bought 500 shares, higher than that would be 400 shares then HGU in the $15 range is at 200 shares...just due to the limitation of capital in the account.

The final tally was $116 net, 2.9% return based on a $4000 capital base...commissions in the morning killed me due to the small moves but I decided that I need to be in more trades in order to be there when the price does move more substantially. At noon I was only ahead $10 net. At least it would be tax free.

So tomorrow I am looking forward to a better day trading as I hopefully can just do some real trades. I do expect a possible drop in prices over the course of the day and even a jump after the 200sma crossing, a bit of a reverse of today. We'll see though...the proof will be in the pudding.

Jeff.

January 12th...I knew I could do it.

I am still waiting for my account linking to take place so I decided to do some fake trading. All of the historical days I have been doing of late all look sunshine and rosey, as hindsight studies should. So I thought I would put some of my theories to the next test.

The almost real fake trade.

What I managed to do was to show a miserable loss while faking. This was a very crappy day to be trading though, so I think I will blame that, primarily, and the fact that I did not recognise it until after 5 trades is the secondary issue. At least I was faking.

No need for better resolution on this chart. The price opened well below the S1, headed for S2 and just plain wallowed in misery right up to noon. The entire range from open has been less than 30 cents. I will not go on about these trades as the green S2 was the trigger for entries and the exits were just whenever I was uncomfortable with the lack of movement...which was often.

HED has been 60 cents and has been elusive to catch the right swing as there is mostly flailing.

I faked ten trades and the results are as follows:

TLM, 6 trades, +8 cents per share, 300 shares = $24 less $60 commissions. (-$36)

HED, 4 trades, +14 cents per share, 200 shares = $28 less $40 commissions. (-$12)

Great grand total of (-$48) net.

I was down about $100 net after five trades and almost threw in the towel but decided I should keep going for the sake of experience at this point. So commissions were the difference between an on target day (1.3% overall) and the resulting loss (-1.2% overall).

I figure that fake trading a day like this is a great setup for trading a good trending or larger ranging day as I was able to squeak some winning trades in in such a tight range. Largest winner was 14 ents per share and the largest loser was 10 cents per share.

The market (TSX) opened and has remained under 9000 and I believe this is the issue as traders and investors cannot decide what to do. This may be a the beginning of a new drop in the market as a whole as it is trending down, if you can call this a trend today, but is bumping against the 8825 mark as support. I'm not into market prognostications though.

I guess I am going to call this a consolidation day. I do expect a surge one way or the other starting at mid afternoon though. I am not looking forward to tomorrows tight pivot points as that will make using the PP200 strategy difficult.

No matter, I am done even faking trade for today. I am hoping that tomorrow is a larger range day.

I just noticed that my account is reflecting only the cash amount as buying power. I must lose my margin capability at some point. I transferred all but a few hundred dollars to the TFSA in order to leave this account active and use it to cover the data fees, should there be any, so the fees are not withdrawn from the TFSA.

Jeff.

The fake trade...dollars and cents

I managed to keep my money in my pocket this morning and do some live fake trading.

In order to make things more interesting, seeing as I had no money on the line I traded three stocks simultaneously...that was interesting.

My hit list consists of four stocks selected from my short list of 10, which I posted in The Turnaround a few days ago and I just reposted to keep it separate on The Short List

My hit list had AEM, CNQ, MG/A and SU.

As a result of today's activity I dropped MG/A from my hit list and added CM. I like the trending pattern of CM (CIBC) and didn't like the choppy action of the MG/A and found that it didn't really track well with the TSX...one of my indicators I use for deciding when to exit a trade. CM, doesn't follow the TSX well either but it is more consistant.

My CM fake trade was entered at about 1015h for $59.60. I would have placed a VTSO of about 30 cents at 1100h to let it go on autopilot and checked in at 1200h I would either place a 50 cent VTSO or just sell for $60.80 for a $110 profit (only 100 shares traded).

Considering that I missed the nice initial moves due to reluctance to enter the trades until I got more familiar with the price movement and indicators along with the three stock monitoring I don't think I did too bad. That and I was fighting the urge to put money down...I had to close the order box in case I got twitchy. $127 net commissions with six trades...add the CM trade bumps it to $227 net.

AEM for $16 net
CNQ for $77 net
SU for $34 net
CM for $100 net

Goal number one is to not lose money. I only had one actual losing trade for SU. The others were just not moving that much at the time. Maximun was three trades per stock.

I was done trading at 1100h except for the CM VTSO...which does not need me to monitor it.

Checking the previous moves before I started tracking trades there was another $350 net fudging against me already or even $175 if you cut that one in half again. 10 additional trades. Had I been using my money there might have been 3 or 4 trades that I would not have entered and those were the $10-$30 trades...bad entry but no loss accrued.

For sake of argument let's take the two worst stocks today, AEM and SU...$50 net gain, add the average of the previous possible trades...at the worst case $43.75 ($175/4) and the total is $93.75.

Based on my $5K capital (which is not that high anymore due to my playing) I would have seen a 1% - 1.9% portfolio gain for the one day gain. Translated into simple annualized returns that grows my portfolio to over $10K in one year assuming that the 1% return is the average daily return and assuming that I do not use any of the growing capital to trade larger lots or higher priced stocks for larger moves.

So much for the "would have"s. I will fake it again tomorrow and perhaps go real on Monday and see what happens.

JD.